MBC helps Messy Church perfect an exciting new venture

MBC is one of just thirty three UK churches chosen to trial a new, exciting outreach venture. Messy Church does Science is a project that builds on established programmes in order to bring a hands-on, 21st century approach to the link between a Christian understanding of Creation and science.

At Moortown our Children’s Worker, Cas Stoodley, and her Messy Church team set up five separate stations which in fifteen minute blocks each looked a different scientific activity.

As well as being asked to provide video and still images of the session volunteers and visitors were asked to fill in feedback forms which will soon be sent off to project organisers.

Our usual Messy Church takes place on the second Friday of each month (term term). To find out more about this brilliant, all age  activity speak to Cas or email her via this link cas.stoodley.mbc@btinternet.com

To view a larger version of any of our gallery images simply click on the picture or if you prefer you can follow this link to watch some video of the event. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEVvffJ7tM

 

 

Half term treat – Friday 17th Feb

On Friday 17 February, during half term, we thought it would be nice for the children, young people, team and parents of all our groups to get together outside of church. The plan is to meet at Roundhay Park (in the car park near the top playground) at 10.45am and spend a couple of hours having fun together.

The 7 ages of being human and being a church

In Shakespeare’s play “As You Like It” one character Jaques makes a speech describes ‘the seven ages of man’.

These are:

Infancy – being a helpless baby, feeling and feeding, dependent.
Childhood – all about playing, talking, learning and becoming independent.
Teenage – finding identity, forming views, experiencing disconcerting change, testing boundaries, being impatient
Young adult – passionate, powerful, forming depth and direction in work, love and independent home. Finding possibility in fearless ways.
Middle-age – enjoying experience and status, having a defined place in the world. Having well-formed views, expecting to be listened to, enjoying maximum resources, but still holding significant commitments.
Old age – senior in years, with great memory but less energy and drive to achieve even though this is still desired. Having less influence and being more dependent.
Dotage and death – dependence becomes the main thing alongside letting go or the senses and experience of life.

These are brief descriptions of the stages of life that just give you a flavour, or are experiences and expectations through living.
You can find the full speech here.

It strikes me that in a family, or community, we will include people at all these seven stages of life. Extended families and neighbourhoods are at their best when every stage of life is appreciated, and cared for. Back in 2011, we had a teaching series on what is means to find and follow Jesus Christ at different stages of life.

If every stage of life is natural and to be embraced it seems foolish to favour one stage of life over and other and not misunderstand people at one stage so as not allowing them to be themselves.

In society, we may be obsessed with teenagers and young adults in some arts and the media. In politics, we may neglect that same group because they lack a vote. We may also be inclined to pretend that we are at a stage of life which we haven’t yet reached or have passed long ago. It is time for some to stop wearing those tight jeans! It goes without saying that we fear and so hide the final stage of dotage / death.

It seems to me that now is the time to let people be the ages they are and to nurture them at that age. I believe that it is time to appreciate and speak well of each age and not favour one stage of life over another.

Applying this in another sphere, I think that we have individual churches at these seven stages of life. I would go further and say that it is good and natural to have churches at every age. We need child, teenage and young adult churches – but we should not obsess about such youthful churches to imply that they have everything. We need middle aged and older churches which offer so much but should not be taken for granted but nor hold onto all the strings of power and resource. We need to honour dotage churches as they let go.

I celebrate all growth and commitment to church planting and pioneer expressions of church. They are part of our tapestry and vibrancy of Christian community. But in championing them let us value the established and traditional. I hope that we can speak better and in a more informed way of the different ages of church, so that all belong and are celebrated. There is also much to be done understanding what each age of church needs and doesn’t need. For instance, let teenage and young adult churches explore and form identity but don’t burden them with too much institutional responsibility. Don’t take middle aged or older church for granted and assume they have nothing to offer – otherwise they will misuse their influence and try to hold it too tightly. Beware of the twin mistakes of neglecting or offering limitless resource to dotage church.

I have a sneaking feeling that we could understand more fully the ages of human life and church. I have a growing conviction that we need to speak better of one another at our different ages of life (human and church). I am sure that Christ holds and cares of every stage of life, even as the young shall have vision, and the old dream!

At the end of this, I realise that I have betrayed my stage of life. Who else would write 750 words and expect others to stop, read and take notice. Yes at 55 I am enjoying middle age with gusto.

Graham Brownlee, February 2017

Ooh! aren’t they lovely – a couple of rather unusual visitors check in at Lunch Club

If you thought our Senior’s Lunch Club was little more than a bunch of people sitting round, drinking tea and playing bingo then you need to think again. Last week Laura Thompson lined up a couple of very unusual visitors in the form of a blue otugnued skink and what to me (although I’ll bet I’m wrong) looked like a giant tortoise.

I have to confess I’m much more of a dog or cat man but many thanks to John Hornby for passing these pictures on… I just hope they all washed their hands before they moved through to the Sports Hall for lunch!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some thoughts on Pastor Paula White’s prayer for President Trump

Paula White, is pastor of the New Destiny Christian Center, she is also President Donald Trump’s spiritual adviser. Here is the text of her prayer at his inauguration.

We come to you, heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus with grateful hearts, thanking you for this great country that you have decreed to your people. We acknowledge we are a blessed nation with a rich history of faith and fortitude, with a future that is filled with promise and purpose.

 We recognize that every good and every perfect gift comes from you and the United States of America is your gift, for which we proclaim our gratitude.

As a nation, we now pray for our president, Donald John Trump, vice president, Michael Richard Pence, and their families. We ask that you would bestow upon our president the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honorable and right in your sight.

In Proverbs 21:1, you instruct us that our leader’s heart is in your hands. Gracious God, reveal unto our president the ability to know the will, your will, the confidence to lead us in justice and righteousness, and the compassion to yield to our better angels.

While we know there are many challenges before us, in every generation you have provided the strength and power to become that blessed nation. Guide us in discernment, Lord, and give us that strength to persevere and thrive.

Now bind and heal our wounds and divisions, and join our nation to your purpose. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, the psalmists declared.

Let your favor be upon this one nation under God. Let these United States of America be that beacon of hope to all people and nations under your dominion, a true hope for humankind.

Glory to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.

Haddon Willmer writes: There is much in this prayer which disquiets me. It is a complacent ‘America first’ prayer. Not being an American nor a Trump-fan, I find it hard to get past its nationalism to find a Christian prayer I can join in with.

Confession of sin is a key component of Christian prayer: there is not a hint of it here. The USA is simply ‘the gift of God’. It is called to be, and is confidently proud that it will be, a ‘beacon of hope to all people and nations… a true hope for humankind’. Without qualification, we ask God to give Donald Trump ‘the wisdom necessary to lead this great nation, the grace to unify us, and the strength to stand for what is honourable and right in your sight’. We have no sense, it seems, that if this prayer is real, we are here asking God for a massive miracle, bringing about a painful uprooting and an unimaginable remaking, a radical conversion for the Donald Trump we have come to know and have to live with for the next four years, at least. Could Donald Trump accept such a miracle? There is little evidence that he would. He certainly does not imagine it is necessary.

This prayer is made ‘in the name of Jesus Christ’. If those words mean anything at all, they remind us that our prayer goes through the filter of Jesus Christ, so that it fits faithfully with Jesus Christ. In his words and actions, in his self-giving and dying, Jesus calls us to repentance, humility, and truthfulness. He saw through the self-assured illusions of the Pharisee at prayer in the public glare and stood with the broken tax-collector, who could do only pray, God be merciful to me, a sinner (Luke 18.9-14).

Haddon Willmer shares the obituary of Zygmunt Bauman, “a prophetic man” and a former colleague at the University of Leeds

Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman

Colleagues will be sorry to hear of the death of Emeritus Professor Zygmunt Bauman, former Professor of Sociology and Head of the Department of Sociology. Formerly of the University of Warsaw, he joined the University in 1972 as its first Professor of Sociology. He was an inspirational teacher and academic leader who served two terms as Head of Department and during his time here published widely, continuing to do so after his retirement in 1990. In 2004 the University awarded him an honorary degree in recognition of his extensive contribution to modern sociological thought, and in 2010 founded the Bauman Institute for Theory and Society, which seeks to address specificities such as the social impact of the global financial crisis alongside broader themes such as how we understand liberty and choice, identity and citizenship, and collective responsibility in modern societies. The following tribute has been contributed by Dr Mark Davis, Director of the Bauman Institute and was also published in the Guardian. http://www.leeds.ac.uk/secretariat/obituaries/2017/bauman_zygmunt.html

In a book published in 2000, the Polish-born sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, who has died aged 91, deployed a metaphor since taken up by the anti-globalisation movement around the world. Liquid Modernity analysed the disappearance of the solid structures and institutions that once provided the stable foundations for well-ordered modern societies, and the consequences for individuals and communities.

Bauman, professor of sociology at Leeds University (1972-90, and then emeritus), argued that our “liquid modern” world was unable to stand still and keep its shape for long. Everything seems to change – the fashions we follow, the events that catch our attention, the things we dream of and the things we fear. An increasing polarisation between the elite and the rest, our growing tolerance of ever-expanding inequalities, and a separation between power and politics remained constant themes in his writings – in all he produced more than 60 books. As the state and the market vie for supremacy within the space of global capitalism, the fate of poor and vulnerable people assumes particular importance. As he put it: “When elephants fight, pity the grass.”

His work was especially influential among progressive young activists in Spain, Italy and across central and South America. “See the world through the eyes of society’s weakest members,” he said, “and then tell anyone honestly that our societies are good, civilised, advanced, free.”

His best-known book, Modernity and the Holocaust (1989), provided a stark warning of the genocidal potential latent within every modern bureaucratic society to privilege process, order and efficiency over morals, responsibility and care for the other. It was shaped by the memoir Winter in the Morning (1986) by his wife, Janina (nee Lewinson), later revised as Beyond These Walls: Escaping the Warsaw Ghetto – A Young Girl’s Story (2006), and his own experience of 20th-century horrors.

Always wary of offering any alternative blueprint for the future, Bauman declined to profess any concrete solution to our common plight. But he retained a commitment to a form of socialism that remained counter-cultural, even when an avowedly socialist government was pulling the levers of power. He believed that a truly good society was one that could never be satisfied that it was good enough.

As people choose to manage their individualised concerns as consumers, hoping to find solutions to their private troubles by shopping, they have largely ceased to act collectively as citizens who share common public issues. In his words: “Can notions of equality, democracy and self-determination survive when society is seen less and less as a product of shared labour and common values and far more as a mere container of goods and services to be grabbed by competing individual hands?”

With the evacuation of trust from political leaders has come a loss of faith and a demand to “take back control” from self-interested elites. Bauman pointed, for instance, to the bank bailout of 2007-08 as the instantaneous creation of “a welfare state for the rich”. Having lived through two forms of totalitarianism, he warned that the change demanded would be authoritarian in character.

A native of Poznań, in western central Poland, he was first a victim of the Nazis, then the communists. The son of Moritz Bauman, an accountant, and his wife, Sophia (nee Cohn), he fled with his family at the outbreak of the second world war to the Soviet Union, and was awarded Poland’s Military Cross of Valour for fighting against the Nazis.

He married Janina in 1948 and lectured in sociology at Warsaw University, becoming a professor in 1964. Four years later he and his family – now with three daughters, Lydia, Irena and Anna – were exiled as a consequence of an antisemitic campaign by the ruling communist regime. He thus became a refugee for a second time and his experiences of poverty, marginalisation and exile led him towards an explicitly morally driven sociology. After temporary posts at universities in Tel Aviv (despite being a critic of the treatment of Palestinians), and then more briefly in both Haifa and Melbourne, Australia, in 1971 Bauman and his family settled in Britain. There he headed the sociology department at Leeds. A prolific and disciplined writer, he started before sunrise. In the 1980s, those tidying up after a staff-student party recall him striding purposefully into the building at 4.30am and into his office to start work. He continued to publish for the rest of his life.

In recent years Bauman analysed the refugee crisis and the rise of rightwing populism across Europe and the US as a “crisis of humanity”. The promise of a socially progressive Europe meant a great deal to him. He believed ardently that the European Union stood as a safeguard for hard-won rights and for shared protection against war and social insecurity. In what proved to be his final lecture at Leeds last October, he drew parallels between the Holocaust and the capacity of today’s populism to make everyone “other”, without compassion or remorse.

His many honours included the Theodor W Adorno prize (1998). For the award ceremony in Frankfurt, neither the Polish nor British national anthems seemed appropriate to him, feeling a stranger in both lands, and so he settled on the Ode to Joy, the anthem of Europe. His work serves as a reminder that our world has been made by human hands and so it can be remade by them too. For all his passion and pessimism, he wrote because he believed that that challenge could and should be confronted.

Janina died in 2009. Six years later Bauman married Aleksandra Jasińska-Kania, also a sociologist. She survives him, along with his daughters, three granddaughters and three grandsons.

Zygmunt will be remembered by students and colleagues alike as one of the great social thinkers, and with genuine affection and warmth for his energy, his compassion and his ability to bring out the very best of others. A private family funeral has taken place, during which, as a mark of respect, the flag on the Parkinson Building (left) was flown at half-mast.

 

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